Friday, October 20, 2017

This
week, we bounce back in the timeline a little to books that were first read to
me and then re-read a few times on my own. I hadn’t originally thought of
writing about Rosemary Sutcliff for this series, but a recent conversation with
my parents reminded me of her books, and how much I enjoyed them, and how
worthwhile telling people about them is.

Each of
Rosemary Sutcliff’s novels of Roman Britain stands alone, with small references
to earlier books for the enjoyment of careful readers. They are vividly
world-built in both the physical environment and the culture. Much history is
mentioned, but much less is explained. Exposition stays well confined to the
perspective of the characters, even when what is common knowledge for them is mysterious
to the young reader. The immersion is well-maintained and the characters feel
authentically of their time, never turning toward the fourth wall for
historical expositions. When I first read these books, I did not approach them
differently than fantasy novels. I had no other historical reference to the
times they were set with which to orient myself, so the world depicted was new
and strange

I have
only come to love these novels more as I return with much greater historical
context. I find the interplay of solid history with legend and imagination enchanting,
and I appreciate the effort Sutcliff puts on depicting the culture of the past
without judgment, but also without excessive bowdlerizing. These books are
satisfying to an amateur student of Roman history, both in the hints of larger
social and political moves that drift into the narrative, and in their joyful
examination of the details of daily life, hypocausts, and bath-houses, and
legion careers. Beyond those details, the novels are united by repeated themes
of legacy, loyalty, and the harmony and tension of blood family and found
families.

The
first of the series in The Eagle of the
Ninth, set in golden age of empire, after the building of Hadrian’s wall.
Our adventure is the search for a lost legionary eagle, vanished along with its
legion in the mists of Caledonia beyond the wall, along with the main
character’s father and an entire legion. After injury derails his career in the
legions, our hero finds a second path in trying to redeem his family’s, and the
empire’s, failure in the north. If there is a highlight beyond the lush
description and enjoyable adventure, it is the clear-eyed view of the immense
privilege that even a lower-level member of the Roman aristocracy enjoys. If
there is a weakness, it the sensationalized savagery of the Celts beyond the
wall, but it did not jar me when I was young, and I cannot now read past the
veil of nostalgia to assess how deeply problematic it may be.

The next
entry in the series is The Silver Branch,
set a couple hundred years later, during Carausius’ rule of a semi-independent
Britain. The issue of loyalties is immediately complicated in this book, as the
legionary heroes must weigh loyalty to the distant and abstract Rome with duty
to the nearby Carausius, a strong and effective steward of Britain, which they
love. In the end of course, the question is resolved by Carausius’ murder by
his treacherous minister Allectus, but not before much plot is wrung from
investigation and skullduggery. Allectus allies with the Saxons, providing the
series’ first glimpse of the blonde barbarians who will be the major
antagonists of the last two books. In the end Rome, in the person of
Re-conquering tetrarch Constantius, returns to its position as the light of
order and civilization in Britain.

Rome is
represented by a literal light in The
Lantern Bearers, the lighthouse kindled by our protagonist as he watches
the legions sail away from Britain, forever. Immediately after that melancholy
symbol of defiance, our hero is captured by Saxons who look very much like
proto-Vikings and taken as a thrall. The second half of the book, after his
escape back in Britain, is an Arthurian story, with Vortigern, Hengest, and
Aurelius Ambrosius, the sometimes Arthur, sometimes Merlin semi-historical last
of the Romans in Britain. This was my first introduction to the Arthur as
bearer of the Roman flame take on that mythology, and I have continued to be
partial to that spin on Arthurian legend.

The Lantern Bearers technically closes a trilogy of
related works, but I will also talk about a spiritual successor that I read
along with the rest and enjoyed greatly. The
Shining Company is an entirely British story, after the Romans and before
Anglo-Saxon and British came to mean the same thing. It is in fact an imagining
of a story told in a Welsh epic, preserved in fragments, called Y Gododdin. The poem and the novel tell
of a picked force of 300 warriors, gathered by the wealthy king of what is now
Edinburgh, and sent into doomed battle with the expanding Saxon kingdoms of
Deira and Bernicia. (Fun trivia, if not a later interpolation in the manuscript,
Y Gododdin contains the earliest
known reference to king Arthur.) The style of The Shining Company is distinct from that of the Roman Britain
novels, more lyrical, more epic, and more tragic, but it shows the same superb
attention to the details of life in the past. It is particularly dear to me for
portraying a world in which magic is believed in and magic is done without
requiring any suspension of disbelief from the reader. Magic is done without
anything necessarily fantastic occurring.

The
lesson that the mundane must be explained and is worth spending exposition on
no less than the fantastic is a quite important one, and that idea is perhaps
the lasting legacy of these books for me. Also a deep fascination with Roman
History. That may have started here too, or possible that was Asterix & Obelix. Either way, I
loved Sutcliff when I was young, and I still find it worth returning.

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About

R. K. Duncan is a new, hopefully up-and-coming, author mostly of fantasy, with a dash of Sci-fi and horror thrown in. He writes about fairies and gods and ghosts from a ramshackle apartment in Philadelphia. On this blog, he writes meandering thoughts about writing.